o when he
looked over curios at the dealer's: it was the choicest of its kind
that he must have; anything of trifling value, or anything
commonplace--he ignored. Olivia had also fixed for him a standard.
Compared to her, all other women were trite and incomplete. No matter
how beautiful they might be, a certain simplicity of manner was
lacking, or the coloring was bad, or the curve of the neck ungraceful.
All of these perfections, and countless more, made up Olivia's
personality, and unless the woman before him possessed these several
charms she failed to interest him. The inspection over and the mental
comparison at an end, a straightening of the shoulders and a knitting
of the brow would follow, ending in a far-away look in his brown eyes
and an unchecked sigh--as if the very hopelessness of the comparison
brought with it a certain pain. As to much of the life of the Quartier
about him, he shrank from it as he would from a pestilence. Certain
men never crossed his threshold--never dared.

One morning there came to him the crowning honor of his career. A new
hotel de ville was about to be erected in a neighboring city, and the
authorities had selected him to paint the great panel at the right of
the main entrance. As he threw the letter containing the proposition
on his desk and leaned back in his chair a smile of supreme
satisfaction lighted up his face. He could now carry out a scheme of
color and massing of figures which had been in his mind for years, but
which had heretofore been impossible owing to the limited area covered
by the canvases of his former orders. This space would give him all
the room he needed. The subject was to be an incident in the life of
Rochambeau, just before the siege of Yorktown. Gregg had been
selected on account of his nationality. Every latitude was given him,
and the treatment was to be distinctly his own.

It was while searching about the streets and cafes of Paris for types
to be used in the preliminary sketches for this, the supreme work so
far of his life, that he took a seat one afternoon in the early autumn
at a table outside one of the cheap cafes along the Seine. He could
study the faces of those passing, from a position of this kind. In his
coming picture there must necessarily be depicted a group of the great
Frenchman's followers, and a certain differentiation of feature would
be necessary. On this afternoon, then, he had taken his sketch-book
from his breast pocket and wa